From SIBERIA, With LOVE!

So does it happen to you? Like whenever the name of a place is uttered a certain image appears in your mind? For me it seldom happens. 

Let's play the game. What comes to your mind when I talk about “Siberia”?

Huge stretches of land, meandering road with patches of ice, snow-capped long ranges. Something like that? Well, yes! Siberia is full of black and white beauty. Black rocks, white snow, black sky, white skin. Yes, you read it right. Skin! And that too white.
This essay is not about the nature. It is about the skin that’s ruling the world.

After the long drawn Cold War and the fall of Soviet Union, Russia has been the centre of abomination in many respects. Be it burgeoning military prowess in the business of power, unwarranted sanctions from UN, ententes with notorious polar powers and many more. But one sector where they had been the next best supply in the global market is Fashion industry. Better to put in a different set of words “Fashion and its allied industries.”

Let’s try to visualise another picture from Krasnoyarsk, the third largest city in Siberia.
A beautiful aisle of a huge palace-like communist architecture. Almost 100-110 girls, each in their black coloured undergarment, standing in that aisle, side by side, looking towards the huge windows on the northern wall of the building. Each of them seems to be very restless holding on a piece of a4 sized paper with something written on them in Russian. The girls were from the age 12 onward but no one of them exceeding 16. Today three agencies from Krasnoyarsk have organised this casting meet for Asian clients from Japan. Out of 100-110 girls only 10-11 will be selected and a few especially for the Japanese assignments.

So to be precise, this the first step in the making of the next-age-Natalia-Vladinova (who was supposedly selling fruits on the street of Russia before becoming the famous face of Givenchy, Prada, Nina Ricci, etc.)  These girls are mostly underage because that’s what the demand in the market is. Is there money in the business? Yes. A few of those in top, makes 30,000 USD a month at an age of 15/16. Are they happy? The question doesn’t qualify because they are making money. If you think the picture I depicted in the previous paragraph is the most difficult step in the process of making a supermodel, you are wrong. Let me give you a background check.

One of the Directors, of such an agency from Novosibirsk, the biggest city in Siberia, describes these models as “Ferrari without Engines”. You put a French engine they will burn Paris, you put a Japanese one, they will burn Tokyo. When questioned about the kind of imminent danger that these kids are pushed into, the director replies with utmost clemency. “We are just the mechanics!”

Well, I still didn’t talk about the other difficult-steps or the imminent dangers. These kids who travel all alone to different continents are made to sign contracts whereby the agencies take a thick commission of what they earn, restricts them from parallel employment and few other ifs and buts. If they run out of money, there are ways out to get paid by rich people by hanging out with them in their socialite get-togethers, being the eye candy doll in some big rich wedding (predominantly in India) or even sometimes ending up being escorts.

There is not a single question of morality that I am trying to raise. But yes, there might be some questions that are pertinent to our social constructs. (In this case the social construct of the places from where these struggling kids offshoots to become the best faces of Testino or Sorrenti or Gucci.)

Just a kilometre drive away from Krasnoyarsk, you will get that familiar picture of Siberia that comes to our mind. Annia, a 13 year old kid who got selected for her first international assignment, lives in a one room house with her single mother Tatiyana. In a country where more than 50% girls are educated and even a doctor earns just 600 USD a month, you can understand how rewarding investing in education can practically be. Annia wished to be some painter but she decided it’s better to be practical. Without putting in any effort if she used to be lauded for her looks from her very childhood, what’s wrong in taking some risk and getting a better life? After all to get a quantum leap in career you have to take some risky decisions. She also wanted to take her mom away from her single room house and give a better life!

Well! Now that makes sense.

So where are we getting it wrong? Or is it that the entire discourse of degrading morality is just a post truth reflection of conspiracies of people who can’t understand the simple zero sum game of demand and supply. Well, who the hell are we to judge?

Just what we want is not to see any disheartening story of some model who died of anorexia, some story of drug or sedative overdose or some “another” story of molestation or rape.

Acknowledgement: Reggae Yates